


Pass the Doctor

by JohnAmendAll



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Community: dw_straybunnies, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-07
Updated: 2010-02-07
Packaged: 2017-11-15 03:02:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JohnAmendAll/pseuds/JohnAmendAll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's said that when the Tenth Doctor was dying, he tried to visit every companion from the show's history. What if the last one he managed was Zoe?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pass the Doctor

**Author's Note:**

> From a [prompt](http://community.livejournal.com/dw_straybunnies/2383.html#cutid4) by [Curuchamion](http://www.whofic.com/viewuser.php?uid=9693) on the [dw_straybunnies](http://community.livejournal.com/dw_straybunnies/) community:
>
>> Ten somehow winds up being helped with/through regeneration by a grown-up Zoe Heriot, who has done something awesome with her life even without her memories of the Doctor.

Back on Earth, when Zoë had been young, the fashion had been to make everything look new. Old buildings, if they couldn't be demolished, had at least been given facelifts to make them look as if they'd been built recently. 

Now, she was on a world where everything really was new, even its name. Thirty years previously, New Albion had been just another lifeless, rocky planet with a suitable orbit. And perhaps because it was so new, everything was built to look as if it had been there for centuries. Outside her window was a quadrangle of stone buildings that might have been there since the reign of the first Queen Elizabeth, surrounding an immaculate lawn. The students passing to and fro were wearing 'mashups', as they called them, of clothes from half-a-dozen different decades, all of them dating from at least a century before Zoë had been born. 

Giving herself a mental slap on the wrist for daydreaming, she turned away from the window and back to the minutes of the last meeting of the University Council. Administration occupied far too much of her time these days, but she supposed that was the price she paid for being the head of the College. Perhaps she ought to retire to her library and her lab – she was certainly old enough by now – and let someone else waste what was left of their life in endless meetings. 

A voice outside put paid to her half-hearted attempts to catch up with the minutes. Outside the door, a man was demanding to speak to the person in charge. Zoë didn't recognise his voice, so he wasn't one of the dons, or any of the other people she met regularly. And a student wouldn't dare to speak as if they owned the place. Zoë decided to intervene. If anyone was in charge round here, it was her. 

The door to the outer office slid open as she approached it. The sound of the argument cut off in mid-word. 

"What's going on here?" she said. 

"This visitor says he needs to see you," her harassed-looking assistant said. "He insists..." 

The man in question was standing near the door, bent over as if in sudden pain. He was wearing a long coat over a brown suit, and running shoes – rather an understated combination by the standards of the student body, but not particularly out of the ordinary. 

"Well, he's here," Zoë said. "He can explain for himself." She addressed herself to the visitor. "Can I help you? I'm the Master of this college. Professor Zoë–" 

"Heriot." The man straightened up. His hair was brown and spiky, his face pale, with a strained expression. His eyes met Zoë's and held them. In that moment, Zoë was sure of two things. Firstly, she'd never met this man before. But secondly, she had a theory – no, more of an impossible guess – who he might be. 

"Come into my office," she said. 

Once the door had slid closed behind Zoë and her visitor, she conducted him to an armchair and sat down opposite him. 

"This wasn't how I wanted it to be," he said, though the last word was more of a gasp. "Just a flying visit. Not a– too late now." 

"You're ill," Zoë said practically. "I'll send for the med-bot." 

She was already starting to rise to her feet, but the man's urgent "No!" stopped her dead. 

"No medics," he said. "I'm not... not human. And I'll be fine." By an obvious effort of will, he forced himself to sit up and smile. "Look. Nothing wrong." 

It was an obvious lie, but Zoë still didn't move. She was more sure than ever who this was. 

"I wanted to see all of you," he muttered. "Rose and Peri and Sarah Jane and Jo." Zoë's eyes widened, but he didn't seem to notice. "All you brave, wonderful, stubborn humans..." 

"Would that be Josephine Jones?" Zoë asked. "Neé Grant? And Sarah Jane Smith?" 

"How did you–" Before her visitor could say 'know', he tumbled forward out of the chair, sending a coffee table flying, and landed on hands and knees before her. It might have been an illusion, but for a moment Zoë thought his hands glowed with an inner golden light. 

"Hold me," he groaned. 

Zoë knelt beside him, and supported him as best she could, bearing in mind their respective sizes. 

"I read Sarah Jane Smith's autobiography," she said quietly. "You're him, aren't you? The man who saved her son from being run over. Who helped Jo Jones when she was stranded on a lonely road in the Andes one dark night." The visitor's body felt cold in her arms, but she continued talking; whether it was to him or to herself, she wasn't sure. "She said she thought you were a ghost. I can see why." 

"I... don't..." 

"Of course, Miss Smith also said that the man who saved her son's life was the Doctor. A man who travelled through time, in a blue box. And if he was going to die, he changed into someone else. Is that what's happening to you now?" 

If he said anything, it was inaudible through gritted teeth. But he nodded. His hands were definitely glowing now, and light was flickering around his face. 

"Is there anything I can do?" Zoë asked. She searched her memory of Miss Smith's autobiography for any clues about how to deal with this situation, and came up blank. Considering how much time and trouble Zoë had spent tracking down the fantastically rare unexpurgated edition, it didn't seem fair. 

The man in her arms groaned, trying to force out words. 

"I... don't... want..." he began. 

He was fighting it, Zoë realised, trying to hold back whatever alien process was racking his body. He'd known he was – dying seemed somehow the wrong word – but whatever was happening to him, he'd managed to delay it long enough to visit her. And Sarah Jane Smith, and Jo Jones, and how many others? 

"You never give up, do you?" she said. In her own ears, she sounded as if she was ticking off a misbehaving student. "I remember that. But–" 

Before she could finish, Zoë and her visitor were engulfed in a burst of golden light, his body blazing brightly enough to be seen through his clothes. Dimly, Zoë was aware of her neat and tidy office being reduced to chaos, as if by a very localised tornado, and of a wave of heat washing over her. She could smell honey, and spice, and burning plastic. 

In her arms, the visitor's body seemed to flow like wax. 

"Hah!" 

His limbs, suddenly gangly and uncoordinated, convulsed, throwing them both to the floor. Zoë, her body aching all over, managed to turn her head and found an unfamiliar face grinning back at her. 

"Hello," it said. 

"Hello," Zoë cautiously replied. "... Doctor?" 

"Got it in one. Hang on a moment. Still sorting things out in here." He managed to disentangle himself from her and sit up. "Have you got any wahoonis? I could just do with a wahooni." 

"I don't know what one of those is," Zoë said, sitting up in turn. Most of the contents of her desk seemed to have joined her on the floor, and her clothes had acquired an exciting new collection of scorch marks. Whatever process had just taken place, it hadn't spared her visitor either: his suit hung in tatters, his once-neat hair was a crazy tangle. 

"Sorry, of course you don't. Sorry. Wrong planet. How about some pickles, then? I could manage a cheese and pickle– No. Wait. This is important. My hair. Have I got hair?" 

"More than you did before. How does that happen? Where does the extra hair come from?" 

The Doctor tutted. "Never mind. That's not important. Here's the important bit. What colour is it?" 

"Brown. Maybe a bit darker than before?" 

"Not again!" The Doctor thumped the floor, and then his head. "What have you got against ginger? Stupid follicles! You'd think they'd take the hint by now!" He glanced around. "What was I doing? I was in the middle of something." 

"You were paying me a social call, I think. You weren't exactly clear, but I think you were trying to visit as many people as possible before you changed." 

"Like Pass the Parcel." The Doctor chuckled. "And the music stopped when I was here, so you got to unwrap the new me. I must have been–" 

There was a slight tremor, and a rumble that sounded not quite like distant thunder. The Doctor cocked his head, listening. 

"Engines out of balance!" he yelped. "Look, I'd love to stay and chat but if I don't get back to the TARDIS some important bits are going to melt and then there'll be a hole in your nice new planet. Quite a big hole. With molten lava and pumice. So I'll have to do this the quick way." 

He pressed his forehead to hers for a second. She felt his mind touch hers, swirling and unstable, like a star newly coalescing. Sights, sounds, impressions flooded into her, answering unasked questions, filling gaps she hadn't known were there. She saw brief flashes of an older Jamie, of Isobel with a toddler on her knee, of other people she'd heard or read about, but never seen. Then the contact was withdrawn, and the Doctor was looking at her with thoughtful eyes. 

"I don't know why I went to the trouble of doing that," he said, sounding slightly put out. "From what I saw, you'd remembered a lot of it already." 

"It started when I read Miss Smith's book," Zoë said. "UNIT, and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, and Sergeant Benton... I could almost see them in my mind's eye. Eventually I found some photos of them." She'd been in the Library of St John the Beheaded, she remembered, on a completely different project. As she'd leafed through the old paper books, the picture of the Brigadier had seemed to jump out at her. Then she'd turned the page. 

"One of the pictures had me in it," she said. "The caption said it was someone called Jennifer Wilson, with a question mark. But I knew it was me." 

"That's the thing, isn't it?" The Doctor pulled her to her feet and hugged her. "Forgetting isn't as easy as it looks. There's always a way back, if you can find it." 

His gaze held hers for a few seconds more. Then he sat back. 

"Anyway," he said. "Got to rush, or we'll end up with that... thing I was talking about. The big volcano-ey thing. Did I mention that?" 

"You did." Zoë swallowed. "Goodbye again, Doctor." 

"See you later, Zoë." 

He hugged her again, turned around, and walked straight into the wall beside the door. The collision nearly floored him, but his next attempt managed to get him out of the office. Zoë briefly contemplated following him, but instead collapsed into the nearest arm chair, feeling her full age. A small part of her mind wondered what on Earth – or rather, on New Albion – her assistant would make of the afternoon's events. But most of her mind was still dealing with her own reactions, let alone anyone else's. To her annoyance, she couldn't stop thinking of things she should have said to the Doctor when she'd had the chance, and hadn't. 

She looked around her office, and hoped she'd soon feel up to tidying up the mess. Some things were obviously beyond her; the carpet, like her jumpsuit, had gained a number of scorch marks. She'd need to get the maintenance staff in to replace it. 

_And while they're here, I'll have them take a look at that crack in the wall_ , she thought. _I'm sure that wasn't there last week._


End file.
